Testimony heard to
raise minimum wage
■ Supporters of the proposed
bill hope to improve poverty,
despite what some argue.
BYOEOB6EGHEEM
Workers on the bottom rung
of the financial ladder may get to
step up soon.
Members of the Business and
Labor Committee heard testimo
ny Monday on a bill that would
boost Nebraska's minimum wage
from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour.
The bill breaks the increases
into two 50 cent bumps, the first of
which would occur Oct. l.The
next would occur in April2002. .
Advocates of LB633 said the
wage spike would help Nebraska’s
poorest families who generally
hold jobs that pay minimum
Opponents, though, said the
bOl would do nothing more than
increase prices mi goods and serv
ices, which would hurt the poor
families the bill aimed to help.
Sen. Chris Beutler of Lincoln,
who introduced the biU, said it
addressed a fundamental injus
tice in Nebraska's economic sys
tem.
“The8percent under the min
imum wage are simply being
treated unfeirty,” he said.
But Kathy Siefken, director of
the Nebraska Grocery Industry
Association, said die vast majority
of fyebraska businesses already
pakl above the minimum wage.
They have to, she said,
because the state’s unemploy
ment rate is so low.
“In Nebraska, employers are
scrounging for employees,” she
said.
In addition, she said, the bill
stifles business expansion and
forces owners to jack up prices to
offset the additional expenses.
She said the proposals may go
so far as to force businesses to
dose shop or to relocate to neigh
boring states that had more
affordable business dimates.
Beutler wasn’t convinced his
bill would send businesses scurry
ing to other sates.
He said the retailing and
restaurant industries house most
of the minimum wage positions in
the state, and these industries
were ensconced in their respec
tive markets.
“Arty’s is not going to relocate
to Iowa,” he said. .
Milo Mumgaard, executive
director of the Nebraska
Appleseed Center for Law in the
Public Interest agreed that most
businesses wont head for the bor
der
Rather, he said the bill would
help struggling Nebraskans get
back on their feel
“Nebraska has a problem with
low wages for these thousands of
families, particularly those com
ing off welfare, “he sakL
Ron Sedlacek, a lobbyist for
the Nebraska Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, said
Nebraska’s poorest workers
deserve a hand.
But, he said, Beutler's bill
would help more part-time and
young workers than people who
actually live in poverty
“This does little to help the
working poor get out of poverty,”
he said.
These people need educa
tional programs and training, he
said.
Sedlacek also suggested
Nebraska wait for the federal gov
ernment to sort out the issue
before enacting the plan, he said.
Beutler said waiting for the
federal government to make a
move was foolish; increasing the
minimum wage was the logical
thing to da
An increased minimum wage,
Beutler said, would cut down on
the amount of people who
depend on the government’s
social programs, like welfare.
"Why do we whip ourselves
into big government because
businesses don't pay enough?” he
asked.
More importantly, he said, the
bill would allow Nebraska’s poor
est citizens to live “life in little
more dignified fashion."
Speaker addresses
'maternal instinct'
BY MARK BALDRIDGE
High rates of infant abandon
ment in certain historical contexts
have caused some researchers to
deny the concept of “maternal
instinct” in humans as a “bour
geois fantasy,” Sarah BLaffer Hrdy,
an expert in primate sociobiology
and author, said Monday.
Addressing the Lied Center for
Performing Arts audience of 450
at the E.N. Thompson Forum,
Hidy countered this position with
one of her own, developed in her
recent book “Mother Nature: A
history of Mothers, Infants and
Natural Selection.’
Using slides, quotes from the
literature of the subject and regu
lar doses of humor, Hrdy pro
posed that mothering instincts in
humans depended largely on the
support resources available in
which mothers projected raising
their young.
“Local conditions shape the
context of expression of maternal
instinct,” she said. “Wherever
assistance rearing infants is in
short supply and other forms of
birth control are unavailable,
abandonment and infanticide
have been practiced”
Looking to conditions in the
Pleistocene era, such as 18th cen
tury France and 21st century
Texas where it is now legal to
abandon infants in certain loca
tions, including places like fire
statidns, within 72 hours after
birth, Hrdy put forth the theory
that human beings are “coopera
tive breeders.”
Given the vast investment
human mothers must make to
rear children - among other pri
mates, weaned infants are able to
provision themselves, while this is
far from true with humans -
mothers must have recourse to a
support system consisting of
other mothers, individuals who
are not yet breeding and older ldn
past breeding age. The theory is
known as the “grandmother
hypothesis” of the evolution of
child care in humans.
Other factors that contributed
to the activation of child rearing
instinct seemed to be hormonal
In one experiment conducted in
19th century Paris, mothers who
were forced to breast feed their
infants for eight days after giving
birth later abandoned their off- '
spring at much lower rates than
mothers not so forced.
Hormonal changes, triggered
by the release of prolactin in nurs
ing mothers, were also credited
with jump-starting the maternal
instinct. The children of mothers
who either abandoned infants or
farmed out their feeding to “wet
nurses,” or women who would be
paid to breast feed other women's
children, do show a significantly
lower survival rate, Hrdy said.
She concluded that many fac
tors, impinging on a “maternal
instinct” that was not automati
cally engaged in all mothers,
worked to create the spectrum of
maternal responses to offspring
observed in humans today
editor
of the Daily Nebraskan
Applicants must have one year of newspaper experience, preferably
at the Daily Nebraskan, be enrolled in at least six credit hours at
UNL this spring, summer or fall, maintain a 2.0 minimum G.P.A.,
and not be on academic probation. Applications are available at die
Daily Nebraskan office, basement of the Nebraska Union, and must
be returned with up to three clips by noon March 19.
THIS IS GIYirS ASS
SCORE
Clyde's ass is voting SC8II
tomorrow in the ASUN Elections.
Clyde knows that e vote for
SCSI! | is a vote for his ass and
Vote
WE CARE ABOUT YOUR ASS!
scan
o
ASUN Student Government
Run-Off Election
March 6, 2001
Group of UNL students
to enter in world finals
FINALS from page 1
the 1999 world finals held in die
Netherlands.
“They received an honorable
mention that year,” Riedesel
sakL “Going in to this year's con
test, they have more training,
more confidence and should do
very well.”
Sabalka said he thought the
team had improved dramatically
since the competition in the
Netherlands.
“I think we are a thousand
times better than we were two
years ago," he said.
“Or at least 250 times better,"
Guo said.
Though thousands of teams
competed, only 64 advanced to
the international competition.
UNL earned a place at the world
finals by beating 109 teams to
take the top spot at the North
American North Central regional
competition in Lincoln in
November.
This year’s world finals
includes teams from Harvard
University, the University of
Hong Kong, the American
University of Cairo and the
California Institute of
Technology. The UNL team has
been preparing for months for
the competition.
“We have been practicing
three days a week," said Brown.
Said Sabalka: “Tb do well you
have to learn how to program
fast and accurately.*
The competition has stu
dents working on complex prob
lems using C, C ++, Java and
Pascal programming languages.
The five-hour event awards
teams for their logic, strategy and
speed.
No matter how the team fin
ishes in Vancouver, the students
said their efforts had already
attracted attention. After their
first-place finish at the regional
competition, the undergradu
ates have been receiving e-mail
messages from companies look
ing to recruit them.
“Our goal this year is to place
in the top 15, but we would really
like to make the top 10,* Brown
said. “If you make the top 10, you
get prizes.*
DN News
At the end of the day __
you can say
Gosh, that was good IKWS. npymjy ^
KUITUt
■ NO APPOINTMENTS NEEDED*
117thANSI 476-9466 ■
OIL CHANGE SERVICE!
The NO BULL Party would like to offer
you, the student body, a voter guide for
today's runoff election....
^Grandfather Tuition Clause*
This is a blind promise intended to make you vote for
SCORE!. After researching the idea for hours and asking
SCORE! how this was going to be done, we have still not
discovered how they intend to make this work, let alone,
get it passed by the Board of Regents.
^Affordable Books
SCORE! has proposed a book swap that would be run
through the ASUN office in order to ensure that students
aren’t ‘‘taken out behind the whoopin’ shed” by the
University bookstore and their lack of a buyback program.
The NO BULL party thinks that a better solution to this
problem would be to hold the bookstore to their contract
that states that they will pay up to 60% of a books original
value if is being used miring the next term or semester.
^Diversity/ International Students
SCORE! wants to fight to ensure that International Students
are still allowed to run for executive positions within
ASUN by lobbying against Regent Restructuring. Who’s
arguing?
MAKE AN EDUCATED CHOICE
VOTE NO BULL.
* SCORE! Platform Headings are taken from actual SCORE
propaganda.
/
NO BULL
Changes in Dead Week Policy
For too long the University's Dead Week
Policy has taken advantage of students and
deprived them of the proper preparation
for Finals Week that we need and deserve.
The NO BULL party wants to work with the
Academic Senate to make sure that some
progress is made toward improving this
outdated policy.
^ Switch to a new email system
The University's current system, BIGRED,
is outdated and not being used by many
students as their sole email provider. Many
of us have seperate hotmail and yahoo
accounts that are more accessible and easier
to use than our current system. The NO BULL
party proposes that we move our accounts
from the BIGRED system to zhuskers.com in
order to receive the same service from our
University accounts as we get from our
outside email providers.
^ judicial Advocacy Program
The Judicial Advocacy Program, under a NO
BULL Administration, would be created to
help defend students who have been accused
of violating the University's Code of
Conduct. Under the current system, the
only person offering counsel to an accused
student is the person who is also
prosecuting them. We just don't think
that this is fair.
NO BULL
MIXAN-WESTERING
ASDN SHUNT QCWERMBMT RDNOFF ELECTION MUCH «, 2001
PAID FOR BT TREASURER MCHELL! SCHRAGE